If you have the time/means of transportation, you should scoot over to Rye, NH this Friday for what promises to be a pretty swell opening at the Soo Rye Art Gallery. The show is called 'Taking Flight'. I am showing four pieces in it, and from what I have seen of the other artists being featured, there is going to be some pretty cool stuff. Things start up at six and go till eight, hope to see you there, whoever you are!
I leave you with this for now: http://www.swiss-miss.com/2007/08/every-morning-i.html
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Lemme tell you
Working full-time makes it so hard to keep this kind of business up to date. All of the time that I've had off lately I've either already had plans or errands, or I'm simply too worn out to do anything other than sit around and vegetate. At the very least, I've completely finished three new pieces that will be part of a group show at the Soo Rye gallery in New Hampshire next month. I'm pleased with all of them, but one is waaay better than the others. In fact, it might be one of my favorite pieces that I've made in at least the last two or three years... I will post them here in a couple of days when I actually feel up to fiddling around and formatting them in Photoshop.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Some New Stuff
Here are a couple of new pieces that I just cranked out this week in an attempt to get back into things:
These pieces kind of represent a new direction that I'm beginning to pursue with my artmaking. I get a great enjoyment out of collaging just for the sake of collaging, so I have begun to design these abstract compositions made almost entirely out of found materials, bringing order and meaning to what used to just be garbage. There is a quality to all of these little scraps that I find around that makes it just really fascinating to sit down and play with them until something happens to fit together just right and suddenly make sense.
M042010.29.16 (Box), 2010. Acrylic, transfer and collaged street debris on board
M14683.20.7460 (Jack), 2010. Acrylic, transfer and collaged street debris on board
These pieces kind of represent a new direction that I'm beginning to pursue with my artmaking. I get a great enjoyment out of collaging just for the sake of collaging, so I have begun to design these abstract compositions made almost entirely out of found materials, bringing order and meaning to what used to just be garbage. There is a quality to all of these little scraps that I find around that makes it just really fascinating to sit down and play with them until something happens to fit together just right and suddenly make sense.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Well
It's official: I'm no longer an art student, I'm just an artist.
:O
I think I'm gonna go start planning a big painting or something.
:O
I think I'm gonna go start planning a big painting or something.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Hi
Breaking the silence... It was kind of a busy sprint getting to the end of my last semester of the Illustration program, so I have sorely neglected my updating duties here. To get rolling again, I thought I'd put a few before and after images to give some sense of how my sketching and development stages for a piece go. Exhibit One:
This is a self-promotional piece I did recently, part of a series of pieces inspired by lyrics of some of my favorite songs. The song is 'Blue' by A Perfect Circle, which talks about self-denial and the inability to see or accept another's distress or suffering.
This is the sketch after some minor layout-tweaking in photoshop to get the proportions and dimensions just right...
...And this is Leda. Hi Leda. I took a lot of reference shots for this. It was a really complicated, dynamic pose to try to capture, primarily because of the movement and action in both the anatomy and the cloth. I also snapped a load of hand reference photos of myself. Dropping what felt like five thousand of those hands into the sketch made me feel like I was in Human Figure 101 again...
Figure Two: This piece was done on the subject of postpartum depression.
This is the initial sketch. A lot of my sketches can look rather minimal or empty because in the finish I let the texture-building techniques I use (collaging, sanding, transferring, etc) do a lot of compositional work in the background areas.
After a while, I realized that my first sketch was simply too tall/squarish to fit effectively in the horizontal space that I had, so I reworked it to this version.
And here's an example of when the unpredictable nature of my materials gets the better of me. Originally, my plan was to transfer this wallpaper pattern into the back of the piece and feature it fairly prominently because I thought the look of it really went great with the atmosphere. When I put it on, though, I realized that it was simply too delicate to show up well on top of what was already there. If you look close you can see it in areas, but it basically became a secondary element. I did add some graphic elements, however, in the form of the halftone dots I transferred in the shadows. Love those dots.
Hope this was fun... I'll do it again some time maybe. Bye for now.
This is a self-promotional piece I did recently, part of a series of pieces inspired by lyrics of some of my favorite songs. The song is 'Blue' by A Perfect Circle, which talks about self-denial and the inability to see or accept another's distress or suffering.
This is the sketch after some minor layout-tweaking in photoshop to get the proportions and dimensions just right...
...And this is Leda. Hi Leda. I took a lot of reference shots for this. It was a really complicated, dynamic pose to try to capture, primarily because of the movement and action in both the anatomy and the cloth. I also snapped a load of hand reference photos of myself. Dropping what felt like five thousand of those hands into the sketch made me feel like I was in Human Figure 101 again...
Figure Two: This piece was done on the subject of postpartum depression.
This is the initial sketch. A lot of my sketches can look rather minimal or empty because in the finish I let the texture-building techniques I use (collaging, sanding, transferring, etc) do a lot of compositional work in the background areas.
After a while, I realized that my first sketch was simply too tall/squarish to fit effectively in the horizontal space that I had, so I reworked it to this version.
And here's an example of when the unpredictable nature of my materials gets the better of me. Originally, my plan was to transfer this wallpaper pattern into the back of the piece and feature it fairly prominently because I thought the look of it really went great with the atmosphere. When I put it on, though, I realized that it was simply too delicate to show up well on top of what was already there. If you look close you can see it in areas, but it basically became a secondary element. I did add some graphic elements, however, in the form of the halftone dots I transferred in the shadows. Love those dots.
Hope this was fun... I'll do it again some time maybe. Bye for now.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Hey
If you get a chance to see, the Portland Phoenix out this week is featuring one of my images on its cover! It's specifically for a story about these gruesome supermax/solitary confinement prisons, particularly ones in Maine. Fun stuff. This was a really fun project that didn't end up taking too long and became another really good texture/space study. A big thanks to Kevin Banks, it was really great working with him again.
Here is the final piece:
And here is a little something I'm currently working on that was inspired by the brainstorming I did for the prison piece:
Images like this really excite me because one of the things that I am pushing myself hard to develop is my ability to paint the underlying concepts/emotions/themes of something rather than a literal translation of text. Sometimes literal translations are simply the best way to go or offer the best artistic opportunity, but the things that I see around that really tend to stick with me are the subtle, surreal compositions of elements that ask you to think and interpret for yourself, to inspire you to feel something rather than try to tell you how to feel. I've been looking at Brad Holland's stuff a lot lately, and he is one of the masters of that sort of thing. Absolutely ridiculous work. Something to shoot for, I suppose.
Here is the final piece:
And here is a little something I'm currently working on that was inspired by the brainstorming I did for the prison piece:
Images like this really excite me because one of the things that I am pushing myself hard to develop is my ability to paint the underlying concepts/emotions/themes of something rather than a literal translation of text. Sometimes literal translations are simply the best way to go or offer the best artistic opportunity, but the things that I see around that really tend to stick with me are the subtle, surreal compositions of elements that ask you to think and interpret for yourself, to inspire you to feel something rather than try to tell you how to feel. I've been looking at Brad Holland's stuff a lot lately, and he is one of the masters of that sort of thing. Absolutely ridiculous work. Something to shoot for, I suppose.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Lookit, show this Friday!
I am a part of Space 242's upcoming show 'I...you...We...ROBOT", which is opening this Friday, the 29th of January from 6-8. Come see, it's going to be a good time. Here are my submissions:
Bartender, 2009. Acrylic, collage and transfer on board
Jazz Band, 2009. Acrylic, collage and transfer on board
Thug, 2009. Acrylic, collage and transfer on board
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